


Enlightenment

by starknight



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Adorable Lumiat (Doctor Who), Bittersweet Ending, F/F, First Kiss, Getting Together, Healing, what do you say when you can finally be together after millennia of angsting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25367437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starknight/pseuds/starknight
Summary: “Hello. I’m the Lumiat.”The Doctor frowned.“I’m sorry,” she said. “Who?”“You know me better as the Master,” said the Lumiat. “But don’t let that put you off.”
Relationships: The Doctor/The Lumiat (Doctor Who), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Lumiat (Doctor Who)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	Enlightenment

**Author's Note:**

> The initial Doctor/Master relationship in this is pretty toxic, and the Doctor's not in a good headspace because of it. Please keep this in mind, and keep yourself safe if that’s going to trigger anything. (thoschei shippers please don’t disown me I swear I love it I’m just spinning it a different way for this fic)
> 
> Other than that, have fun! I really enjoyed writing the Lumiat, she’s such a great character and she honestly deserves the world. Stay safe 💖

_ She wore white, and she wore it well; _

_ her eyes were bright, she cast a spell _

_ over the gentle hum of night _

_ and the brisk, sweet harmony of day, _

_ and wherever she walked,  _

_ the stars followed. _

Translation of an Untitled Shabogan Folk Song

The Doctor had known for a while that things were getting bad again. Certainly not the worst they'd ever been, but still generally bad. She tried not to sleep, because sleeping meant succumbing to her thoughts, and her thoughts were not in a good place. So she’d put it off for days, weeks, months, as long as she could manage, until walking was difficult and shapes became blurs in her vision. Then she’d stumble to bed and sleep until she couldn’t sleep any more.

Waking up could take a while after that. Or getting up could, anyway. Much easier to lie in bed, listen to the TARDIS’ worried burbles and ruminate. She turned off the natural lighting cycle on days like that, because it made her too sad to see the rhythm of sunlight ebbing and fading, all the days she was missing, all the life she’d never get to see.

It had started getting worse right about when the Master had trapped her in the Kasavin’s realm. As soon as she’d realized who he was, the Master,  _ her _ Master, it had been like life was real again. Colours etched themselves into her brain, so that after only a few seconds of staring at him, she had every line of his face memorised. 

And then he’d been cruel. She'd memorised that, too.

Of course, it was normal for him to be cruel. But last time - last time, when the Master had been Missy - it had been better. The Doctor had been so sure that Missy would finally join her, that she would turn away from evil and try to find the good within herself. But she never did.

It had hurt the Doctor more than she could ever express, and it had hurt worse because she'd hurt in the same way so many times before. An old scar, re-opened. She’d thought that time and repetition might numb the pain, but that had been a foolish, naïve hope from her youth. Just like the hope that the Master would redeem themselves. 

It was stupid. Every time, it happened every time; the Master would show up, and be evil, but not quite evil enough to fool the Doctor. She could see the cracks in the facade, see the person underneath the villain, and in her hearts she never really wanted him to leave. She’d thwart him, and he’d make a big show of escaping her, with the flash of a promise in his eyes as he went. He would be back. He would always be back. And she’d always be waiting for him.

Because as much as she hated him, as much as she despised his actions and all that he stood for… She couldn’t find it in herself to stop loving him. And there were moments in between all the evil plots where she could swear that the obsession she held over him was more than simple. He’d take her hand, or he’d kiss her (she’d kiss him, in that particular circumstance), and some small, shrivelled part of the Doctor’s soul would reach up towards the sunlight, quivering in anticipation. 

That was what kept her coming back, she supposed. Hope. The tiniest sparkle of it sat in the back of her mind, and as long as it did, she couldn’t give up on her oldest friend. Her oldest love. Her oldest challenge.

But the Doctor was tired, and had been for some time. Since the Time War, if she was being honest with herself.

So when the Master took her to Gallifrey, when he robbed her of the agency that he  _ knew  _ she held so dear, when he told her  _ everything you know is a lie _ and  _ you are the timeless child _ and she couldn’t even tell which part he was lying about beneath all the layers of deception that bound her, she snapped. She said what she should have said a long time ago.

“I am so much more than you,” she told him, and then she left him there to die. 

She gave up.

The Doctor was sitting on the TARDIS console, feeling freer than she had in a while and at the same time more traumatized than ever when a knock came at the door.

_ Knock-knock. _

What? She got up and approached the doors slowly, squinting at them in suspicion.

_ Knock-knock. _

The Doctor scanned the doors with her sonic, and got… nothing out of the ordinary. How could someone be out there? It was raw time vortex, there wasn’t any  _ out _ to be  _ in.  _

_ Knock-knock-knock-knock. _

Suddenly the Doctor knew exactly who it was, and exactly how they were out there, and she yanked the doors open with all the rage and pain her hearts were still beating with. But it wasn’t the Master, or at least, it wasn’t the Master as she knew them.

The person standing outside the TARDIS doors had dark, curled hair that bunched around her face, in a style the Doctor thought might fit in very well on 1930’s Earth. Her skin was pale, slight lines around her eyes and mouth indicating a healthy amount of smiles smiled. She wore a dress keeping in the style of her hair, tucked in at the waist to a simple red ribbon and with the sort of wavy poofy sleeves that the Doctor had only ever looked at longingly through shop windows.

In short, she was breathtaking, and the Doctor wished desperately that that body belonged to someone other than the one person she had just sworn herself off.

And then the person, who was quite possibly the Master, collapsed face forward into the Doctor’s unprepared arms.

There had been a lot of  _ umming _ and  _ ahhing _ on the Doctor’s behalf before the training from her grand total of three weeks of medical school had kicked in. With a click of her fingers, the TARDIS rematerialized in a slightly different position around them, relocating the Doctor and the Master to the zero room. It pulsed and hummed soothingly around them as the Doctor felt her inhibitive enzymes firing happily away. It was quite relaxing. 

She gently lowered the Master to the floor, which was thinly padded, and wouldn’t be uncomfortable. There the Master lay, mouth slightly open, her freshly regenerated curls askew.

It was regeneration, wasn’t it, that was affecting her like this? It was strange that the Doctor couldn’t sense any of the usual energies around the Master. Complications during the process?

Before she could stop herself, the Doctor reached out a hand and smoothed out the Master’s curls. Just to neaten them a bit.

And then she folded her legs, and sat, and waited.

It took a few hours for the Master to stir. By this point, the Doctor had made no less than five cups of tea, only for them all to get cold. Still. Perhaps the scent of it would help, as it had helped the Doctor on the Sycorax ship a few bodies back.

“Ungh,” groaned the Master, lolling her head to one side. “Ow.”

“Master?” the Doctor asked, patting her cheek. “Master, are you -”

The Master sat straight upright, seeming to become entirely alert within half a second.

“The Doctor,” she said. “I have to find - you!”

“Hi,” said the Doctor. “Rough regeneration?”

“Something like that,” said the Master, her blue-grey eyes meeting the Doctor’s. “I think I’m good now. Thank you.”

The Doctor felt a little like she’d been punched in the face. Gratitude? From the Master?

“No,” she said. “No, don’t.” 

It was too good to be true. It was always too good to be true. What was the bet that the Master hadn’t even regenerated, she’d just shown up at the Doctor’s door and assumed - correctly - that she’d take care of her?

“Um,” said the Master, blinking twice. “Alright, then, I… rescind my thank you?”

The Doctor sighed, pushing herself to her feet. She needed to end this quickly, now, before she got any deeper.

“But where are my manners? I should introduce myself,” said the Master inexplicably. “Hello. I’m the Lumiat.”

The Doctor frowned.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Who?”

“You know me better as the Master,” said the Lumiat. “But don’t let that put you off.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you. Ever. At all. Okay? Lumiat, Master, Missy, any of you. So you can just go and - and piss off, alright?” 

It hurt the Doctor to say it, and she hated that it hurt, because it didn’t have to hurt. The Master made it hurt. They always made it hurt.

“Wait,” said the Lumiat, getting to her feet. The white of her dress seemed to glow in the dim light of the zero room. “Please, let me explain.”

“No,” said the Doctor, backing away, unable to take her eyes off the Lumiat. “No, you’re going to twist it again, aren’t you?”

“I am not the Master,” said the Lumiat.

“But you said -”

“Doctor, Doctor, darling pie. Wait, please. I just want to talk. If you give me ten minutes, and you still want me to leave after that, I will, I swear I will. I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want. Ten minutes. Please?”

The Master had never called her  _ darling pie  _ before, and she had to take a second to buffer.

“Five,” she said shakily, her back hitting the wall of the zero room, letting her hand brush against a cool round tile to steady herself. “You get five minutes.”

“Thank you,” said the Lumiat, her eyes crinkling at the sides. She moved forwards, and knelt before the Doctor, looking up at her with eyes the colour of an impending storm. “Do you remember the Valeyard?”

“What, the - the Boatyard?” That was not what the Doctor was expecting.

“I believe his chosen title was the Valeyard.”

“He’d have been better suited to the Graveyard,” the Doctor shuddered. “Don’t remind me. Insufferable prick.”

The Lumiat smiled. “He was rather, wasn’t he? I remember being a bit miffed that someone else got to piss you off that much.”

The Doctor felt a little thrown by the Lumiat’s honesty. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a dance, a give and take, a plethora of miscommunications and hidden feelings and no-one ever saying what they really meant.

This was nice, though.

“What about him, anyway?” the Doctor asked.

“Well, the Valeyard was an amalgamation of all your -”

“All my deepest darkest parts, yes, thank you, I know. Come to gloat some more about it, have you?” This was more like usual.

“No, dear. I’ve actually been through something… similar.”

“You what?” the Doctor croaked. All the deepest darkest parts of the Master, put together? It didn’t bear thinking about.

“Except with me, it was all the good bits. Well, mostly good bits. That was the idea, you know, the whole point of the technique. To rid ourselves - Time Lords, I mean - of evil.”

The Doctor screwed up her face in confusion. “You’re… all the good bits? Of the Master?”

“Precisely.”

It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. The Doctor must surely be dreaming. It wasn’t a thought she’d ever permitted herself to have, because you couldn’t just take people and cut out the bits you didn’t like. The Master, deny it as they may, was a whole person, and the deep dark of their inside was an inseparable part of them. In all her fantasies she’d only ever thought of redemption, of the Master turning to her and saying things like  _ I want to be better _ or  _ can you make me good? _ After which would follow a huge amount of work, and time, and effort, all of which would probably see them well through their last regenerations.

The Master showing up fully un-eviled in her TARDIS was not something she’d ever imagined could happen. And now that she’d imagined it, she knew it couldn’t be true. There was a far simpler and much more likely scenario at play here.

“Stop it,” she said. “I’ve had enough of your games to last me a lifetime.  _ Fourteen _ lifetimes, actually.”

“It’s not a game,” said the Lumiat, holding up her hands. They were just a little broader than the Doctor’s own, the fingers a little thicker. The Doctor had never been able to look at the Master’s hands and not get distracted. She pushed them down, out of sight, before she could think about it.

“It’s the only thing you can think of that might get me to forgive you again, isn’t it? The only way you can make me trust you, and then I’ll fall for it, and you’ll pull the rug out from under me all over again. Just like you always do.”

The Lumiat sighed. “I’ve hurt you endlessly, dear. It’s time for that to stop. Remember when I was Missy? How close we were? How close  _ I _ was to changing?”

The Doctor tried not to because it never helped, only hurt.

“I did change. I was regenerating, and I just thought - what if I could get rid of it all? What if I could make myself anew, without any of the bad bits? What if I could fix myself?”

There was an honesty in her eyes, then, that the Doctor found hard to shy away from.

“So I did. It hurt like nothing else, but I did it. And now I’m better. I’m a good person, Doctor. I promise.”

The Doctor was so tired of trying to second-guess the Master. Sometimes it was easier just to play into their traps, and see what happened. And she wanted so badly to believe the Lumiat, because to see the Master without evil was all that she had ever wanted.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” she asked. “And don’t say I have to trust you.”

“I’ll prove it,” said the Lumiat. “Wherever and however you want.”

The Doctor knelt down to the Lumiat’s level. The Lumiat was just a little bit taller than her, which she shouldn’t like, but she did. 

“Prove it, then,” the Doctor whispered. She knew that the Master would never. Not without a show, or an audience, or an agenda.

The Lumiat’s eyes were steady on hers.

“Are you sure, dear?” she asked, one of her (strong, beautiful, capable) hands coming up to rest on the Doctor’s cheek.

The Doctor nodded, still not believing that the Lumiat would have the courage. Kissing was too open, too vulnerable, and it implied far too much care. The Master, broken as they were, would self-destruct before they let themselves be that happy.

Then the Lumiat kissed her, and the Doctor’s brain went blank.

Hope sparked in her chest.

And still the Lumiat was kissing her, and kissing her, and the Doctor was kissing her back. The Lumiat tasted like sunshine, like the light that she’d been craving for her whole life, and she drank it in. She revelled in the tenderness the Lumiat’s hand on the back of her neck inspired, the warmth and want the tiny noises in the back of the Lumiat’s throat made the Doctor feel. It lasted for seconds, minutes, hours, days - time was strange in the zero room.

When they broke apart, the Lumiat didn’t move back, didn’t try to deny it, didn’t try to stab her, didn’t clap her hands to bring out the cybermen. She rested her forehead on the Doctor’s, and she giggled. It might have been the most dorky, beautiful sound the Doctor had ever heard, and she had heard a lot of sounds in her long life.

“I love you,” said the Lumiat, pulling back to take the Doctor’s hands in hers and fix her with that already familiar stormy-sea-blue gaze. “I always have.”

The Doctor opened her mouth to reply, to speak the words she needed to speak, but all that came out was a wretched, rasping sob. She felt her face crumple, and tried to pull her hands away from the Lumiat’s to cover it, but the Lumiat pulled her forwards instead. The Doctor buried her face in the Lumiat’s chest with all the dignity of someone who has been tired, desperate, and pining for two thousand years, and wept.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she cried, holding the Lumiat tighter, fisting her hand in beautiful white poofy sleeves. “This is stupid, and I’m stupid, and you’re stupid, and I love you  _ so much  _ and -”

She had to break off to cry properly for a bit after that, with no speaking possible between her heaves and gasps, the Lumiat all the while rubbing her back and murmuring soothing things, which just made the Doctor want to cry more. 

“I’m sorry about your dress,” she managed eventually, eyeing the damp, snotty mess of it. “It’s still really hot on you, if that helps.”

The Lumiat laughed and shrugged.

“It helps a little. Love, are you alright?”

The Doctor shrugged back. “I think… I think I will be.”

“With me?” The Lumiat held out her hand, wiggling her fingers.

The Doctor took it, squeezing the Lumiat’s hand gently, and god, yes, hands were good.

“With you.”

Eventually, the Doctor was just fine. It was amazing what wonders a regular sleep schedule could work, especially when you were sleeping next to the dorkiest, sweetest, gentlest, bestest Time Lady this side of the multiverse. Her days were filled with the Lumiat, either the Doctor following amidst the starry tracks of the Lumiat’s TARDIS, or the Lumiat trailing along after her and a rotating cast of friends and companions on stupidly risky adventures. Her soul felt like a freshly watered plant: healthy, strong, and resilient like it had never been before.

Occasionally, she still wondered if it was all an elaborate plot, if the real, broken Master lurked somewhere beneath the Lumiat’s easy, lovable surface. But after two centuries of a completely content life together, she was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, it was possible to have something that was both good and true.

And the Lumiat was good and true.

Right up until it was time to leave.

They sat together on the eve of the Lumiat’s departure.

“I know you have to go,” the Doctor began again. “But couldn’t you delay it just by, you know, a day or -”

“Love, I’ve delayed all I can. It’s time.”

The Doctor took the Lumiat’s hand, fingers fitting in perfect harmony, both slightly wrinkled by time now.

“Will we meet again?” the Doctor asked. “Once you’ve set Missy’s conversion in motion?”

The Lumiat shook her head. “You know this, darling. The sun has set on our time together.”

“Lumi,” said the Doctor, her voice cracking. “I’m not ready for you to go.”

“You are,” said the Lumiat. “I promise, dear. Look after me, won’t you? All of them. They need you, Doctor. They need your help.”

“I’ll help them,” the Doctor promised, kissing the back of the Lumiat’s knuckles. “I’ll help the Master. But I’ll never forget you.”

“Nor I you,” the Lumiat whispered, and kissed her, as deeply and softly as the first time, all those years ago. “My Doctor.”

“My Lumi,” the Doctor replied breathlessly, tasting salt. “My light, my stars, my life.”

“I’ll still be amongst the stars,” said the Lumiat. “I’ll be there as long as you’re watching.”

The next night, the Doctor sat alone on the TARDIS doorstep and watched the stars. She could feel her regeneration coming on now, and it had been a good run this time, hadn’t it? This body had learnt more about love than any of her others had been privileged with. She sipped her tea, and felt an empty ache where Lumi should be next to her.

It was a privilege to play her small part in the universe, Lumi would say. And it was. The Doctor got to be good, and kind, not cruel, not cowardly. The Doctor was lucky.

And soon the Master would be too.


End file.
